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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Pain Now or Pain Forever

First and Foremost, I hope everyone had a happy Memorial Day Weekend. I hope that my readers took a little time to think about the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we could enjoy our freedoms. It is a pain a little to close to home...

However, that isn't the point of this blog entry. Last week I had a discussion with a fellow project manager, who I've gotten to know over the last 5 years and think very highly of. She mentioned a pain point that I hear all too often...

"I have an assistant that is a hard worker, but doesn't understand how to organize tasks. I have to spend a portion of my week sitting with him in order to define the order in which he needs to hit the To Do List..."

Now, the pain point may not be obvious, but here it is:

I DON'T HAVE TIME TO TRAIN THEM, BUT I DO HAVE TIME TO FIX IT.

Look at it this way. She has time every week to go over the assistant's to do list and prioritize it for him, but she doesn't have the time to train him to do it himself, with perhaps a review by her. Her pain is ongoing because she spends time every week making this correction. If she would take a bite out of her schedule to train the assistant, she may be able to trade some extended pain now but afterwards forgo the pain forever. I honestly think it's a fair trade.

Which brings me to the real point of the story. Do you have personnel on your team who are under-performing, or more specifically, under-trained? As a leader, it is your responsibility to take COMMAND, in order to not only identify the situation, but remedy it. If the budget is too tight to pay for training, then look at your organization and determine if someone else has the skills and can teach them. Not enough time is not enough of a valid excuse. Experience some pain now, because it is growing pains; rather than experiencing pain forever because you "don't have the time."